Are you grinding or polishing?

"You know, we really are perfect for eachother."
"Yes we are."

It was midnight, I had just gotten our 5 month old son to sleep. My husband and I were lying in bed where he was entertaining my desire to talk despite his desire to sleep. That's usually when we do most of our real talking. Not the "Where are the wipes??" and "What do you want for lunch?" kind of talking, but quality conversation that reminds us we have more in common than the mess-making minions we cohabitate with.

"No, but not just because we're in love," I said "because we bring out the worst in eachother."

"What??" I had his attention.

"Well, each of our short comings are the other's strengths. We seem to bring out the parts of each other's personalities that need to be worked on. We're constantly giving one another opportunites to grow by causing us to have to work on our immaturities and short comings...we are polishing each other into better people."

"Yeah..." he said thoughtfully, "Sometimes I think we grind more than we polish."

No marriage is perfect. Its very rare you find a couple who had never been in a fight. Its even more rare to find one that never argues or disagrees at some point. It's natural to do because we're individuals with different thoughts and feelings. And let's face it, men and women are on completely different planets when it comes to thought processes. So, there are going to be times in your marriage when you are going to disagree.

The question is: Are those moments being used to polish or grind?

Women, think for a moment about something your husband/boyfriend/fiance does that drives you absolutely crazy. Now think about how you react when he does that.

When we react angrily and negatively to situations where our spouse is displaying their not so positive qualities, we are "grinding" on them and our relationship with them. Instead of saying "I understand you're a human who isn't perfect and I accept you for your flaws, lets work on this" you're saying "You can't do anything right, why do you always do this? I'm right, you're wrong!" when almost always, none of that is true.

But that is how we make eachother feel when, in an argument, we are prideful and only think of ourselves.

As a couple, our job is to build eachother up. To be using the situations where we disagree or perhaps are displaying our shortcomings to help polish eachother as individuals and as a unified force for good. When we respond to eachother with patience and understanding and then look at ourselves and accept the existence our own flaws then we can truly begin to polish and stop grinding.

Because just like there was at least one (or probably more) things you could think of that drives you crazy about your spouse, I guarantee he or she has a few of those about you. We need to be willing to let go of our pride and accept that the weaker areas of our relationships are most likely 50% our fault as well. We have to be willing to step back and not always be right. We need to be polishing ourselves into more understanding individuals who value the feelings of our spouse more than our own.

When you care about someone else more than you do yourself, that is true love.

So...what are you going to do next time you get in an arguement?

Grind or polish?

It's going to be okay, and we UNDERSTAND.

I was in church a few weeks ago, sitting next to another family with small children. The young mother of this family had her son on her lap, and he appeared to be about 3 or 4. He was being rowdy, talking loud, swinging around in her arms and trying to get down. If she let him down he would try to run off, so up again in her lap he went. This caused more noisy protests. She offered a book and this appeased him, but it was short lived and he was quickly back to trying to escape.

You could see the embarrassment on her face...the longing in her eyes that he would just behave. You could see her trying to listen, trying to get something out of the talk being given. You could almost hear her wondering if it was even worth it to come to church.
I understood completely because that is Kaiden every Sunday. The embarrassment is real. You think people expect your child to be quiet and sit perfectly still. And some do...but those are they who do not have children, do not interact with them EVER, and do not want any of their own.

Most people are understanding. They know a child is not meant to sit still and be quiet.
I wanted to tell her that. I wanted to tell her we understood, and that we were happy she was there.
Then he headbutted her right in her nose.
I saw her holding her face with her eyes shut, in obvious pain and dealing with the internal struggle to NOT get mad.
Seeing what he had just done, the child instantly felt remorseful and loudly began to say "Sowwy! Kiss it!" and aggressively tried to wrap his arms around her head and "kiss better" her now possibly broken nose.

He loved his mother, and he didn't mean to hurt her. At no point in the whole situation was he ever trying to misbehave. He was being a little boy who was bored and didn't want to be where he was.
Just like a child who falls to the ground in the grocery store because he's tired of walking and he can't eat any of the yummy food he sees. And the child who gives the appearance of being kidnapped as he kicks and screams because he doesn't want to get in the car to leave the park and go home.

Just like ALL of our children old enough to express personality have behaved at one point or another.

Do not worry about the crabby, immaculately dressed woman who makes the aside comment loud enough to hear that if she had children they would never behave that way. There's a reason she doesn't have them.

We understand. We've been there and we know.

You are doing the hardest, most important job in the world. Keep your chin up, because someday this will all be over, and you are going to look back and wonder where on earth the time went.

But for now, please know that you'll get through this and it is going to be OKAY :)

Whoever Said Patience is a Virtue Did Not Have a 3 year old

I am not a very patient person.
I am, in fact, quite the opposite of patient.
I look up movies on IMBD before seeing them because we're poor and I can't wait for them to come to Redbox.
I eat food when it's still too hot.
I can rarely keep presents from my son for Christmas's or birthdays, causing me to have to go buy MORE right before his birthday.
As a teenager, I would change into the new clothes I had just bought at the mall instead of taking them home first.

There are many other examples I could give you, but I feel like that paints enough of a picture for you to understand my impatience.

So, unfortunately, my lack of this virtue tends to work it's way into my parenting style. This has caused me to easily loose my temper resulting in yelling and sometimes spanking my son to do what I thought was teaching him how to properly behave.

And that works...if you want your child to be afraid of you.

But it's not the approach to take if you want your child to respect you and do what you ask because they know it's the right thing to do and because they know WHY it's the right thing to do.

So, story time.

My husband, my son and I were at dinner. I don't remember what Kaiden was doing, but it was his usual acting out of some sort and it had been repetitive. So for whatever reason, I popped him on the mouth and very sternly told him not to do whatever it was he was doing (something to do with his mouth as I try to make punishments fit the crime).
My husbands eyes grew wide and he asked startled "Do you always hit him??"
I immediately became defensive, "I didn't hit him. I just popped his mouth, I would never hit him."

But I had.

And it didn't show Kaiden that I loved him and that I understood he was a child who isn't going to behave all the time.

It showed him that if he does something he isn't supposed to, I'm not going to calmly try to teach him what he should do instead and help him understand why he shouldn't do that particular action, but that I am going to hurt him.
Either physically with spankings and "poppings" or emotionally by yelling.
I would never reach over and smack Jake on the mouth if he said something I didn't like, so why on earth was I doing this with my son?

Because it was so much easier than being patient. It was easier than being understanding, holding my breath to calm down, and addressing the situation in a way that may take much more work to get the desired result of obedience.

So back to the dinner table, a slightly heated discussion about how to discipline our children ensued. I felt I was not wrong in my approach. I wasn't beating Kaiden. He was perfectly fine and now he knew not to do what he did.

But Jake had a much wiser approach then I would ever expect from a 21 year old father, but then he's always been much older and wiser than he actually is. He has always been the one to keep me grounded and help me see how to handle things in better ways.

He told me he thought that we should give Kaiden excessive amounts of positive reinforcement to encourage him to do the things we want him to do and later we can combine that with reasoning with him (when he's at the appropriate age level to do so). Yelling and spanking would get us no where. He will only continue to be upset and it wont stop the undesired behavior. We need to show love and patience and redirect the negative action into a positive one.

I threw my hands in the air and said "Fine. Be my guest." And the next thing I said is crucial as to why what I was doing wasn't working: "I don't have the patience"

So later that night before bed, Jake asked Kaiden to help him clean his toys. Kaiden did what he always does: he dropped to the ground and wailed and proceeded to kick whatever was closest to him.
Now here is where I would have raised my voice and yelled "Get up and put your toys away NOW!" and possibly yanked him over to his toys.

Jake stayed calm, helped Kaiden sit up, and started to put toys away again asking him to put his toys away. Kaiden angrily threw one car into the bucket as if to say "I'm going to do this, but you're not going to like how I do it!"
Jake immediately praised him like crazy.
Kaiden smiled and threw another car in.
Jake praised him some more.
With in seconds Kaiden was cleaning up his cars, no crying, no fits.

I was instantly humbled. I knew I was wrong, and that this is what I should have been doing all along.

I can't say that I'm perfect, I still slip up and lose my temper and raise my voice occasionally. BUT I'm trying very hard to always respond to Kaiden with love and patience.

Because he's just a child who is learning how to be his own little person and he needs my love as he figures that out, not my wrath.

So now, instead of yelling, I take a deep breath, bite my tongue, and force through the much more difficult patient approach in hopes that some day it will not be so difficult and it will be as easy to respond with love and tolerance as it is for me to respond with anger and frustration.

I'll let you know how it goes :)